Abstract

Pedestrian Navigation Based on a Waist-Worn Inertial Sensor Sensors 2012, 12, 10536-10549; doi:10.3390/s120810536 sensors ISSN 1424-8220 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors Article Pedestrian Navigation Based on a Waist-Worn Inertial Sensor Juan Carlos Alvarez *, Diego Alvarez, Antonio López and Rafael C. González Multisensor Systems & Robotics Lab (SiMuR), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Oviedo, Campus de Gijón, Edificio n°2, Gijón 33204, Spain; E-Mails: [email protected] (D.A.); [email protected] (A.L.); [email protected] (R.C.G.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +34-985-182-529; Fax: +34-985-182-065. Received: 1 July 2012; in revised form: 17 July 2012 / Accepted: 25 July 2012 / Published: 3 August 2012 Abstract: We present a waist-worn personal navigation system based on inertial measurement units. The device makes use of the human bipedal pattern to reduce position errors. We describe improved algorithms, based on detailed description of the heel strike biomechanics and its translation to accelerations of the body waist to estimate the periods of zero velocity, the step length, and the heading estimation. The experimental results show that we are able to support pedestrian navigation with the high-resolution positioning required for most applications. Keywords: pedestrian dead-reckoning; inertial navigation; localization; location based services; ambulatory monitoring; human motion 1. Introduction We present a personal navigation system (PNS) based on inertial measurement units (IMUs). A PNS is a device that computes its own position in indoor or outdoor terrains without depending on external signals. Our system consists of a commercial off-the-shelf IMU placed on the back of the user, near the body center of gravity (COG), and wirelessly connected to a handheld processing unit. The IMU has two functions: it measures gait-corrected inertial disp

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